There were three books in The Strain series by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The FX TV series will be five seasons and it is entering its third now. When season three begins, it has only been 23 days since the CDC quarantined New York City and discovered the vampire species the Strigoi, as the introduction to the season reminds us. Eph (Corey Stoll) is looking for his son while Fet (Kevin Durand) encounters some New Yorkers watching the authorities from the sidelines.

We spoke with Hogan and producer Carlton Cuse after their Television Critics Association panel for The Strain season three. Del Toro was not available this year as he is filming The Shape of Water, but he has supported the show with his attendance at two previous TCAs. The Strain returns Sunday, August 28 at 10PM on FX. Read More »

Just last week, Amazon gave a full series order to Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, a new series focusing on the recurring CIA analyst character who has been played by the likes of Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine on the big screen. This time it will be The Office and 13 Hours star John Krasinski in the lead role as he is thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time.

All we previously knew about the show’s story was that it would see Jack Ryan uncovering a pattern in terrorist communication that launches him into the center of a dangerous gambit with a new breed of terrorism that threatens destruction on a global scale. But now John Krasinski has revealed some more details about the show, including where inspiration for the story will come from and just what kind of series we’re looking at in terms of scale.

Find out more about the Jack Ryan TV series plot after the jump. Read More »

Jack Ryan lives again. Last fall, Amazon put into development a Jack Ryan TV series based on Tom Clancy‘s bestselling series of books, and this past spring John Krasinski was confirmed for the lead role. Now they’ve ordered a 10-episode first season for the show, which hails from Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland. The plan was always for Jack Ryan to bypass Amazon’s usual pilot season and go straight to series, but this makes it official. Read More »

Carlton Cuse was on a Television Critics Association panel for his FX series The Strain and we had an interview with Cuse and The Strain author and executive producer Chuck Hogan. During the interview, we asked Cuse about his Jack Ryan TV series for Amazon, which would star John Krasinski as the CIA analyst of Tom Clancy’s novels. Cuse revealed that the show began as a straight adaptation of Clear and Present Danger.

“We started working on an adaptation on Clear and Present Danger and then decided it just felt dated,” Cuse said. “It really led to this revelation that the thing that defined Tom Clancy was that his thrillers were very much geopolitical thrillers of the moment. They really tapped into something that was going on in the world, so we’re doing an ISIS/ISIL type story. It feels very much connected to what’s happening in the world right now.” Read More »

Not too long after Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit opened in theaters, Chris Pineconfirmed that was his first and last time playing Tom Clancy’s hero. Since Kenneth Branagh’s film was the lowest grossing Jack Ryan picture to date, that news didn’t come as a shock to anyone. Shadow Recruit performed well overseas, but the thriller only made around $50 million in the states. The movie itself is a fine thriller, it just wasn’t exciting enough to leave audiences craving more adventures with Jack Ryan.

However, the character will soon return in an Amazon series. Last September, Amazon won the bidding war for the Jack Ryan show, and now they’ve found their star, John Krasinski (13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi).

UPDATE: The Jack Ryan TV series is now in development at Amazon, as reported by THR. Original story from 9/23/2015 follows.

Jack Ryan‘s last attempt at a big-screen comeback fizzled after just one tepidlyreceived film. But he’s a CIA hero, damnit, and that means he’s not about to give up so quickly. The classic Tom Clancy character will now head to TV, with some help from Carlton Cuse and Michael Bay. Get details on the new Jack Ryan TV series after the jump. Read More »

This weekend Melissa McCarthy enters secret agent territory as the unlikely hero Susan Cooper in the action comedy Spy. And while the trailers seem to indicate that she’s probably not the best woman for the job, she did get us thinking about the best spies in the business.

There have been plenty of spies on the big screen, from James Bond to Jason Bourne, and I decided to count down the Top 15 Best Movie Spies that we’ve seen throughout the years. However, you won’t find the likes of real-life spies whose life stories have been adapted for film. Instead, this is a collection of fictional spies from the movies. So with that out of the way, let’s count down the Top 15 Movies spies after the jump. Read More »

Chris Pine has been all over the map in 2014. He showed off his comedy chops in Horrible Bosses 2, his wild side in Stretch, and most recently, his musical talents in Into the Woods. But the one thing we can definitely expect him not to do is return to his first movie of the year, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

In a new interview, Pine shoots down talk of a Jack Ryan sequel, and then expresses his “deep regrets” that he wasn’t able to get the franchise right. Hit the jump for the Chris Pine Jack Ryan comments. Read More »

It’s cold and icy and generally miserable outside right now in most of the U.S., which means now is the perfect time to pour yourself a cup of tea, bundle up in a cozy blanket, and dive into Sequel Bits. After the jump:

On October 25th 2012 I found myself sitting in The White Horse pub watching a monitor showing Chris Pine run through the misty rain into a financial building. While the sequence in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is supposed to take place in the brand-new financial center in Moscow, Russia (a clue to the film’s antagonist) it was being filmed in Liverpool, England.

For nine years, producers have been trying to restart the franchise, based on the character Tom Clancy created in books like The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games. Taking a cue from the recent James Bond films, Jack Ryan is an origin story — a pre-boot set in the now. In this versions, 9/11 has taken place, and is a huge motivator for our hero. The following is what I learned about the film from co-star Kevin Costner and director Kenneth Branagh, fresh from Thor.